In my previous column, explained why advertising and digital media have made even more vital the role of the ‘rainmaker’ — the accountant who can draw new clients into the practice. If you hope to succeed in this role, you’ll need to take at least these five steps:
Treat clients as your most valuable asset.
For most professionals, the vast majority of their new business will be generated from existing or past clients and referral sources. However, this are ready to sell when the opportunity arises, — new business does not happen by chance.
Successful rainmakers work on their relationships with clients and ensure they regularly pay attention to them, making them feel valued and keeping their clients up to date with key information, ideas and opportunities.
These activities allow the rainmakers to stay in relevant touch with their clients, keeping their value at the top of the client’s mind. However, successful rainmakers also know that they must strike a balance between ‘new’ new business and incremental new business development with existing clients.
Make business development a daily priority.
There are opportunities to sell each day. Successful rainmakers recognise that to be successful at business development, they need to make it a priority and work at it consistently.
Every client interaction can be a source of new opportunities, and successful rainmakers are ever vigilant for opportunities. They know they are not selling all the time; however, they are ready to sell when the opportunity arises. They treat their business development activities with the same level of commitment that they bring to providing clients with sound professional advice. They recognise that making business development a priority is as much about mindset as it is about time management.
Discipline yourself.
While the approaches are limitless and must highly personal, successful rainmakers create a system. Some spend the first 10 minutes of development each day on a business development activity. Some schedule business development on their calendars, just like client meetings.
The important thing is that there is a disciplined structure in place that keeps selling and business development a consistent, conscious priority, as opposed to something that is done when there is a lull in a busy workload.
They treat new business development like keeping fit. They know that if you don’t do exercise regularly then you lose your fitness or in this instance, your sales edge and opportunities.
Make your competencies visible.
Successful rainmakers recognise that ‘random acts of lunch’ are not usually successful and therefore not a good use of limited sales time and resources.
Successful rainmakers ask “where am I going to focus my sales efforts this year?” and “how am I going to make my competencies visible to the people who need to know the people who need to know about them?” They then translate their answers into a plan of action to maximise their visibility in the right areas.
These visibility plans can take on many different forms. They may be strategic and align the vision, goals, targets and activities of the business. Or they could be something more individualised, such as pursuing a particular market segment for new revenue opportunities.
Either way, successful rainmakers look at leveraging visibility management activities, such as being a keynote speaker at selected public/industry events, writing targeted articles/blogs regularly, attending targeted networking events, building a referral base, using social media or email marketing to target key clients/prospects, and so on.
This way, they get recognised for what they do well and in turn get rewarded with more sales and work.
Focus on high-potential sales opportunities.
Most professionals are busy. Remember, they usually sell expensive time, so any time invested in business development is not directly fee-generating.
Under the best of circumstances, professionals have a limited amount of time to invest in selling and business development. As a result, successful rainmakers focus their limited sales time where they can get the biggest return on their investment: high-potential targets that are most likely to become clients or who can refer them to other potential clients.
Typically, these targets are existing or former clients. These are people with whom the rainmaker has a relationship based on demonstrated trust and knowledge of their capabilities.
As you can see, simply running an advert that promotes your firm isn’t enough to leverage an increase in new business. Additional new business will only come when you combine the basic ingredients of rainmaking. And remember: everybody lives by selling something.
